Articles and Resources

QUOTE: Brutality cases against police officers are notoriously difficult to win...whatever case prosecutors make will have to overcome the inherent deference to police officers that most jurors take with them to the courtroom, experts said.

QUOTE: at the prodding of a faculty adviser there who pointed out that belonging to Jewish organizations was not a conflict of interest, the students revisited the question and unanimously put her on the board.... spotlight what appears to be a surge of hostile sentiment directed against Jews at many campuses in the country, often a byproduct of animosity toward the policies of Israel.

QUOTE: Clearly, there is a moral principle at work in the actions of the leakers, whistle-blowers and hacktivists and those who support them. I would also argue that that moral principle has been clearly articulated, and it may just save us from a dystopian future.
In “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” one of the most poignant and important works of 20th-century philosophy, Hannah Arendt made an observation about what she called “the banality of evil.” One interpretation of this holds that it was not an observation about what a regular guy Adolph Eichmann seemed to be, but rather a statement about what happens when people play their “proper” roles within a system....A good illustration of this phenomenon appears in “Moral Mazes,” a book by the sociologist Robert Jackall that explored the ethics of decision making within several corporate bureaucracies.

QUOTE: House members are banned from lobbying on Capitol Hill for a year after leaving office (Mr. Pomeroy’s term ended in January), but Mr. Pomeroy, a Democrat, has teamed up with his former chief of staff, who is not subject to the restriction, as a lobbying partner.

QUOTE: The underlying issue, which the Supreme Court has now ratified, is Wal-Mart’s authoritarian style, by which executives pressure store-level management to squeeze more and more from millions of clerks, stockers and lower-tier managers. Indeed, the sex discrimination at Wal-Mart that drove the recent suit is the product not merely of managerial bias and prejudice, but also of a corporate culture and business model that sustains it, rooted in the company’s very beginnings.

QUOTE: Goldman’s bets against WaMu, wagers that took place even as it helped WaMu feed a housing frenzy that Goldman had already lost faith in, are examples of conflicting roles that trouble its critics and some former clients. While Goldman has legions of satisfied customers and maintains that it puts its clients first, it also sometimes appears to work against the interests of those same clients when opportunities to make trading profits off their financial troubles arise.

QUOTE: Companies have long kept a close eye on employees to maintain productivity and guard against theft. But the economic downturn has prompted some to redouble their efforts—and advances in technology have given them the means.

QUOTE: In postelection Iran, there is growing unease among many of the nation’s political and clerical elite that the very system of governance they rely on for power and privilege has been stripped of its religious and electoral legitimacy, creating a virtual dictatorship enforced by an emboldened security apparatus, analysts said.

QUOTE: According to assistance agencies, Iraqi refugees across the country — some of whom, like the Jabers, risked violence, kidnapping and death threats for assisting U.S. forces — face the danger of homelessness in their adopted land... The government's refugee assistance system as it exists is in crisis, and is failing to meet its basic mandate to protect and serve refugees...

QUOTE: The calls from Chrysler officials were coming nearly every day...And the message was simple: Take more cars.
Many of those fighting the hardest are dealers who recently spent huge amounts of money to stay in the company’s good graces, who sacrificed their own profits to help keep the company intact...only to learn that they were the ones who would not.

QUOTE: Indeed, a decade or two out, halfway up the career ladder or higher, a yes-yes-yes woman will discover that she wants to start saying no sometimes. But can she? Can any woman in a fast-paced, high-powered career ever stop saying yes -- without self-destructing?

QUOTE: Here is a Jew accused of cheating Jewish organizations trying to help other Jews, they say, and of betraying the trust of Jews and violating the basic tenets of Jewish law. A Jew, they say, who seemed to exemplify the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes of the thieving Jewish banker....In addition to theft, the Torah discusses another kind of stealing, geneivat da’at, the Hebrew term for deception or stealing someone’s mind. “In the rabbinic mind-set, he’s guilty of two sins: one is theft, and the other is deception,” said Burton L. Visotzky, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

QUOTE: When the elderly exhaust their assets, individually or as a couple, the government steps in and pays for their long-term care. Adult children are not part of the Medicaid eligibility equation. But Medicaid is in big trouble — cutting here, squeezing there — and will be inundated when baby boomers reach old age. The staggering cost of long-term care and the explosion in the number of people who will need it has prompted a second look at filial responsibility laws as a way to deal with the impending crisis.

QUOTE: Ms. Rhee has proposed spectacular raises of as much as $40,000, financed by private foundations, for teachers willing to give up tenure....Ms. Rhee said she could no longer wait for a union response to her proposal, first outlined last summer, and announced an effort to identify and fire ineffective teachers, including those with tenure.

QUOTE: As news of Mr. McClellan’s new tell-all book — in which he calls the war in Iraq a “strategic blunder” and accuses Mr. Bush of engaging in “self-deception” — dominated the airwaves, the White House and a tight-knit group of former aides pushed back. They sought to paint the former press secretary as a disgruntled man trying to redeem his own reputation after long remaining silent about concerns he is suddenly taking public.

QUOTE: [Barack Obama's candidacy]...has driven a wedge through the black political establishment, exposing a rift between a new generation, whose members see their political horizons as limitless, and their predecessors, who have struggled to establish a following outside of heavily African American areas.

QUOTE: The [subpoena] comes as part of an escalating, three-way confrontation between Congress, the Justice Department and a group of former CIA officials involved in the decision to destroy the videotapes, which showed the use of harsh interrogation tactics on two suspected al-Qaeda operatives in 2002.

QUOTE: A bill in Congress seeks to eliminate military slot machines overseas that take in $130 million a year, mostly from soldiers. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tennessee, named the bill after Army Warrant Officer Aaron Walsh, a decorated Apache helicopter pilot who became addicted to gambling on military slot machines.

QUOTE: The first-of-its-kind survey of more than 1,600 physicians, published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that 45 percent said they did not always report an incompetent or impaired colleague to the appropriate authorities -- even though 96 percent agreed that doctors should turn in such people.

QUOTE: The approach marks the first time since the Civil War that attorneys have been recruited in large numbers to represent veterans. The lawyers hope their legal expertise will speed consideration of claims and result in better benefits for veterans, Stichman says.

QUOTE: The survey was conducted by the National Alliance for Caregiving, a research and policy organization, and Evercare, a division of the UnitedHealth Group, which coordinates long-term care for 150,000 clients. The report urges government assistance for family caregivers, whether through tax deductions, tax credits or other stipends.

QUOTE: His story is one example of how medical advances in the battlefield have outpaced the home front. Many wounded veterans return home feeling that the VA system, specifically its 62-year-old disability ratings system, has failed them.

QUOTE: Republican presidential candidate Fred D. Thompson said yesterday that he wishes one of his key fundraisers had told him earlier about past drug trafficking and bookmaking arrests because, even though they occurred more than two decades ago, "nothing is ever over and done with and forgotten about in this business."

QUOTE: To that end, the administration has set up a special program for a small number of Iraqis, which gives preferential treatment to full-time employees of the American Embassy, about 125 in Baghdad, and to 500 interpreters by allowing them to skip the lengthy United Nations refugee process once they leave Iraq.

QUOTE: The Army plans to begin a program today to educate every soldier about traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. The rare effort to break the perceived stigma within the military on mental health problems comes as increasingly more troops return from battle with serious but undiagnosed conditions.

QUOTE: On Dec. 7, 2001, nearly three months after the terrorist attack that had made him a national hero and a little over three weeks before he would leave office, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took the first official step toward making himself rich.... Giuliani, grounded in the intricately connected world of New York politics, has been more than adept at making the system work for his clients.

QUOTE: By the time Harman's board of directors approved the sale last month, a new form of private equity was born, allowing ordinary investors in public companies to keep a piece of the business after it is bought out and taken private....Harman said. "From the beginning, I was determined to align myself with the shareholders. Thus, I wanted and was offered no deal different from what any other shareholder would get."

QUOTE: While no one has specifically studied business travel and infidelity, academics and therapists say cheating is probably more prevalent on the road than close to home. And the heightened exposure of business travelers to the possibility of infidelity increases the prospects that they and their employers could be left to air the details of their affairs in the courts or in the press.

QUOTE: Top Army officials pledged during a Senate hearing Wednesday to investigate whether a brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division is dispatching injured troops to Iraq as part of the so-called surge into Baghdad, Iraq.

QUOTE: Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses

QUOTE: From Cincinnati to Atlanta to Los Angeles... fumbled political reactions to a charge of police misconduct - whether it was the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles or the 2001 shooting of a young black man in Cincinnati - have taught lessons about the importance of reaching out, urging calm, and dealing with nothing but the facts.

QUOTE: one skill they don't teach in business school is the care and feeding of the media mogul/owner. And they are a peculiar breed, these larger-than-life corporate titans. For Redstone and fellow moguls like News Corp. (NWS ) Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch and Liberty Media (LCAPA ) Chairman John Malone, the business is inextricably tangled with their own personal images—and family fortunes.

QUOTE: "PAYING PEOPLE to submit stories to a social news site is just plain wrong," wrote someone....Jay Adelson, chief executive of Digg, which helped pioneer the social news format with a focus on tech-related news, said his Web site will not pay contributors because he fears that will disrupt its online community.

QUOTE: The rumor mill is still buzzing about Microsoft's new Zune digital music player....the revelation that Microsoft's own Zune player will not support their stores despite this longstanding partnership...must feel like a serious betrayal of trust..

QUOTE: hough many travelers aren't aware of airline partnerships, dozens of carriers around the globe have joined forces to offer mileage credit for flying with their partners....In theory, it's a great way to bolster your frequent-flier balances and gain elite status; in practice, according to travelers and frequent-flier experts, it's sometimes difficult to get the miles.

QUOTE: Sixteen former employees of accounting firm KPMG have sued to compel the company to advance their legal fees and expenses in connection with a federal probe of an illegal tax shelter scheme...They claim that this previously uncontested practice created a "reasonable expectation" that legal fees and expenses would be advanced...

QUOTE: ...another CIA officer -- the agency's deputy inspector general...was startled to hear what she considered an outright falsehood...during the discussion of legislation that would constrain the CIA's interrogations. That CIA officer was Mary O. McCarthy, 61, who was fired on April 20 for allegedly sharing classified information with journalists...

QUOTE: In the nine months since he became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin J. Martin has pushed through a series of decisions that have made the country's largest phone companies even bigger and, in the view of critics, made it harder for smaller companies to compete with them.

QUOTE: The Army has suspended plans to expand an unwieldy, 16-month-old program to call up inactive soldiers for military duty, after thousands have requested delays or exemptions or failed to show up.

QUOTE: ...the document's symbolic impact is already rippling through the Roman Catholic Church and beyond, hailed by some as a much-needed antidote to a gay clerical subculture and derided by others as a misguided attempt to blame homosexuals for the church's pedophilia scandals.